After earning an impressive 1.6 million viewers for its UFC 114 broadcast, Spike TV’s “UFC Prelims” broadcast for this past weekend’s UFC 116 event dipped slightly for an average of 1.3 million viewers, MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) today confirmed with an industry source.

The three-fight July 3 broadcast, which featured Brendan Schuab vs. Chris Tuchscherer and Ricardo Romero vs. Seth Petruzelli, as well as a bonus fight of Gerald Harris vs. David Branch did peak with 1.5 million viewers in the final quarter hour.

Additionally, the July 2 broadcast of the UFC 116 weigh-in ceremonies, the first-ever such broadcast for Spike TV, drew 645,000 viewers.

UFC 116 took place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, and the “UFC Prelims” broadcast served as a teaser for the night’s pay-per-view main card.

Overall, the “UFC Prelims” broadcast drew a rating of 1.11 among men 18-34 and a 1.04 among men 18-49. Both figures were good enough for second place among all basic cable networks in the timeslot, ranking only behind TNT’s “Sprint Cup Race Day Daytona.”

The UFC first offered a PPV teaser broadcast for UFC 103, when the UFC went head-to-head with a boxing PPV broadcast featuring Floyd Mayweather vs. Juan Manuel Marquez. The specials proved effective enough at generating last-minute pay-per-view buys that officials from the UFC and the organization’s longtime cable partner decided to make them a regular offering.

The full list of “UFC Prelims” broadcasts and ratings includes:

UFC 109 (February 2010): 1.7 million viewers

UFC 114 (May 2010): 1.6 million viewers

UFC 108 (January 2010): 1.5 million viewers

UFC 104 (October 2009): 1.4 million viewers

UFC 103 (September 2009): 1.4 million viewers

UFC 116 (July 2010): 1.3 million viewers

UFC 106 (November 2009): 1.3 million viewers

UFC 111 (March 2010): 1.2 million viewers

UFC 116’s “UFC Prelims” broadcast was the fifth of 10 planned for 2010.

The Latest

Since the early days when the sport was anything but a mainstream endeavor, the MMA industry has thrived and survived through various websites, forums and, perhaps most importantly, social-media platforms.

In this week’s Trading Shots, Danny Downes and Ben Fowlkes look at Ronda Rousey’s 34-second victory over Bethe Correia at UFC 190 and try to put it into terms that capture the moment without getting swept away by it.

A total of 26 fighters got their chance to shine on Saturday as part of UFC 190 at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena. Now that UFC 190 is in the books, it’s time to commence MMAjunkie’s “Three Stars” ceremony.

The man known for cranking submissions to the point of injury added eye-gouging to his repertoire. But is the controversy of Rousimar Palhares too essential to his bizarre, awful appeal for his employers to take any meaningful action against him?